'The Walking Dead' Season 3, Episode 7 Recap - 'When the Dead Come Knocking'

Our hero is a hero again, and our villains have stopped being in any way sympathetic. Things are set up nicely for the mid-season finale next week.  Let us know what you think in comments.

The Prison

There is only a little hesitation from Rick in helping Michonne inside (a couple of well-aimed shots from Carl help too), so it's not long until he has the opportunity to get informaiton from her. Michonne, though, is as prickly and uncooperative as ever. Seriously, this woman needs to learn some people skills. She trekked all this way to inform them about Glenn and Maggie, then she gets there and refuses to speak. Yeesh.

Eventually she comes around and convinces Rick to take a small posse with him to the prison. They run into some walker trouble on the road (and happen upon a guy who seems to have not left his cabin during the entire outbreak), but arrive at the prison without any injuries.

Woodbury

There are two storylines here this week. The less exciting one has Andrea helping Milton with his latest experiment, which is attempting to communicate with an old man right after he re-animates to see if he retains any memories. Spoiler alert: he doesn't, he's a zombie.

The other follows poor Glenn and Maggie as they endure very different kinds of torture at the hands of the Governor and Merle. First Merle beats the living crap out of Glenn, then unleashes a walker on him. Glenn breaks out of his chair and kills the walker, proving once and for all that he is now a full-fledged badass.

Maggie, meanwhile, hears all this in the next room, but is not approached by Merle. Rather, the Governor comes in and attempts to charm her into revealing the location of their camp. When she refuses, he gets as evil and creepy as we've seen him thus far: he orders her to take off her shirt, and threatens her with rape.

When she refuses again, he simply takes her into the next room (still topless) and threatens to kill Glenn. That gets her to reveal the location of the prison, which is apparently a spot that the Governor has been interested in for a while now.

If that wasn't enough to make your skin crawl, the moment when the Governor hugs a still naked Maggie and says "shhhh, it's all right now" contrasted with the moment when he does the exact same thing to a still ignorant Andrea is pretty horrifying.

All of this is very clearly setting up for a showdown in Woodbury, as Rick and co. are right outside the walls with all the firepower they have. How many deaths will we see in next week's episode? Any bets?